Facts and Fear

When I was eleven, my father landed me a summer job on a milk truck. Sainted mother roused me at 1:00 a.m., the driver would pick me up, and for ten hours, with a break for breakfast, we would roam the dark streets of Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

There were mean dogs and dim hallways, but the most terrifying spot was a block east of Main Street, a Catholic church complex. I would walk down an unlit alley, scoot under a broken fence slat, cross a yard, put two homos, i.e. bottles of homogenized milk (more innocent times), on the back porch, pick up two empties, and run like the devil was after me. It wasn’t the devil I feared. It was the thought of running smack dab into a nun in that dark and fearsome place.

I don’t know from where the fear arose. I had never seen a real nun. Maybe I had heard hyperbolic tales from my Catholic pals. Anyway, I trembled at the prospect until one morning our truck broke down and we didn’t make the church until dawn was breaking. The creeping light comforted me, and I walked bravely through the fence and into the yard. As I turned toward the porch, there stood, a few feet away … a nun reaching for the milk. I can’t describe her except to say that she had the most beautiful and comforting face I had ever seen. She smiled and that smile lightened my “postage stamp world” so much that the humbled sun halted its feeble progress for a second or two. I smiled back, took the empties, and strolled back to the truck, never to fear that spot again.

Facts and reality can cure fear. Perhaps they could cure hate as well, if we would only look.